ABCNews.com Relaunches with Citizen Journalism
ABCNews.com is marking its tenth anniversary with a bold new redesign that features increased use of video. Beyond the new skin there's not a lot that's new with one key exception - ABC is opening up to contributions from citizen journalists.
According to Michael Clemente, Senior Executive Producer, the new site, which it launched last night, is designed to harness the power of what they call "citizen reporters." Viewers and readers can now help ABC help report the news by feeding in news and leaving comments. The new site also supports video uploads from cell phones and video cameras, some of which will make it on to air.
ABC isn't going as far as the BBC, which allows remixing, or USA Today, which turned its site into a social network. However, it's certainly a step in the right direction. The comments that are streaming in (118 as of this writing) are mixed and mostly focus on the design, not the ability to contribute.
Are they going to pay these citizen reporters?
- Amanda
Posted by: Amanda Chapel | Sunday, April 29, 2007 at 11:14 AM
Paid? Of course not!
http://www.communicationsmgr.com/projects/1226/docs/License%20Agreement.pdf
"Licensee acknowledges that it will receive no compensation for the rights herein."
Posted by: Seth Finkelstein | Sunday, April 29, 2007 at 04:11 PM
People that for for nothing are idiots. Then again, today we've elevated idiots.
In that spirit, I'd like to make an Open Offer: Anyone who wants to work for free, my car is dirty. For details, you can reach me at chapel@strumpette.com.
- Amanda
PS Hey Seth, how's that open source stuff going. Makin' any money? Are you any good at housework?
Posted by: Amanda Chapel | Sunday, April 29, 2007 at 10:24 PM
Hasn't CNN been doing this with their iReport? I don't recall any particularly breaking news coming out of that. I think sites like Wikipedia or reddit, which are not controlled by a corporate entity will continue to be on the front lines of citizen journalism.
Posted by: Ilya Lichtenstein | Monday, April 30, 2007 at 12:12 AM
Amanda - Some people do it for reasons other than money. They might want to gain a wider audience, they might want to share just because they like sharing, they might come across some breaking news and don't have a blog...
Ilya - I seem to recall a recent cell phone video from VT that was uploaded to iReport. That was breakign news.
Posted by: steve Garfield | Monday, April 30, 2007 at 09:11 AM
I guarantee that if I ever have breaking news/video/audio, its going on a blog first with a watermark and copyright crap in it, I'm not going to give a corporate site the chance to make money when I could.
Posted by: flash devs | Monday, April 30, 2007 at 06:01 PM